Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy (7 page)

A puzzled look. "How to take pixtures. With the
camera." He pointed at the newspaper on the passenger seat.

"How come you hide your camera?"

"I can't always trust people to be honest."

He gave me a troubled look this time. "I'm
honest. I don't steal anything from anybody."

"I wasn't worried about you, Paulie."

A hang-jaw smile. "Good. I'm not worried about
you too."

I said, "Was that Mr. Dees who just left?"

The blink and nod. "Why do you want pixtures of
Mr. Dees?"

"I don't, actually. I'm just taking photos of
the condos here. I spoke to Mr. Hendrix this morning."

That seemed to sit well. "Mr. Hend'ix hired me.
I'm the super."

I swung my head around. "You do a fine job, too.
The grass and bushes look great."

Another blink and nod. "I spend the whole week
cutting and mowing and raking, and you know what?"

"No, what?"

"By next week, I got to start all over again."

"Well, if I had a place like this to run, I'd
sure hire you."

The troubled look again. "Oh, no. No, you can't.
I work for Mr. Hend'ix. I'm the super."

"And you're so good at it, I'll bet you'll be
here a long time."

A more troubled look, as though Fogerty had never
thought of not being there until I'd planted the idea. To get him off
that, I said, "Mr. Dees lives in the cluster over there?"

Now the look went back to puzzled. "Cluster?"

"Those four houses with the yellow doors."

"Oh, yeah. He lives in the second one. But
they're units, not houses."

"Who else lives there?"

"Mr. Dees lives by himself."

"I mean in the other hou—units around him."

"Oh. There's Mr. and Mrs. Stepanian, Mrs.
Robinette and Jamey, and Mr. Eh-men-dor and Kira."

Kira. Unusual enough name that .... "What does
Kira look like, Paulie?”

"She's pretty." Fogerty looked down, his
cheeks flushing, his hands moving nervously on the rake again. "She's
very pretty."

"Does she wear black clothes?"

Blink and nod. "Black, yeah. Lots of them."

"Do you think Kira's home now'?"

"Yeah. Mr. Eh-men-dor is sick, and she takes
care of him."

What the other girl, Jude, must have meant in The
Tides about Kira's father. "How about the Stepanians?"

"They're not sick."

"Are they home, though, do you think?"

"Mrs. Stepanian, maybe. Mr. Stepanian goes to
work. She does too, sometimes."

I was feeling a little guilty pumping Fogerty, but at
least I couldn't see it getting back to Hendrix. "How about Mrs.
Robinette?"

"She's home a lot."

"And Jamey?"

"He's not home yet. He goes to school. Special
bus, like me."

"Like you?"

"Like when I went to school. This special bus
came to my old house and picked me up."

"Where do you live now, Paulie?"

He pointed at the prefab building near the tennis
courts. "My new house. Mr. Hend'ix hired me. I'm the super."

"Wel1, listen, you've helped a lot. Thank you."

"You going to see Mr. Eh-men-dor?"

"Probably."

The hang-jaw smile. "Good. He can show you how
to use your camera to take pixtures right."

Paulie Fogerty walked off to tend his greenery,
bouncing the tine end of the rake off the ground every other step,
like he was counting cadence for himself.
 

=5=

I drove toward the four-unit cluster I'd seen Andrew
Dees leaving. His number 42 was second from the left. Given what
Paulie had told me about the other residents, I figured Kira and her
father were the most likely to be home and the Stepanians the least,
with Mrs. Robinette in the middle. Taking my portfolio briefcase with
the questionnaires in it, I walked up the path to number 41, the end
unit next to Dees. Since STEPANIAN appeared under the button, I tried
it first.

Perhaps twenty seconds after an electronic bong, a
woman opened the yellow front door. She was about thirty and slim,
maybe five-five in fiat shoes. Her black, shiny hair crept just
slightly into sideburns, a faint duskiness above her upper lip as
well. She wore a plaid skirt, the blouse red and picking up one of
the minor colors in the skirt, the pantyhose blue and picking up one
of the others. I had the immediate impression of someone who was all
dressed up with no place to go.

"Yes?"

"Mrs. Stepanian?"

"Yes."

"My name's John Cuddy." I took out the
identification holder and held it up for her to read.

"Private investigator?" Her face, shaped
like an inverted teardrop with a dainty chin, clouded over. "What's
this about?"

"I've been asked by another condo complex to
look into how well the Hendrix company manages yours."

"How well?"

"Yes. My clients are thinking about perhaps
changing companies, but they'd like a discreet rundown on the
possible alternatives."

"Oh." Stepanian seemed to relax a little.
"Well, that certainly is prudent of them, isn't it?"

She spoke the sentence neutrally, without any
sarcasm. I put the ID holder back in my pocket. "Could I come
in, ask you a few questions?"

"I suppose that would be all right."

Stepanian ushered me through the little entrance
alcove into her unit. In front of us was a living room that segued
without walls into a dining area. To the right of the dining area was
a squarish kitchen, behind it a sliding glass door leading to a rear
deck. The space above the living room part was open air, the second
floor overhanging only the dinner table and kitchen. A set of stairs
with picketed balustrade rose to a catwalk above the first level. The
catwalk provided access to a pair of doors fifteen feet apart, an
indentation between them that I took for the upstairs bath. Most of
the wall area was plasterboard painted a matte white, wainscoting in
naturally stained oak covering the three feet from the bottom of the
plasterboard down to the wall-to-wall carpeting.

I said, "Very nice place," meaning it.

Stepanian moved to the center of the first floor and
looked up and around, as though she were seeing the unit for the
first time. "Yes, it's just perfect for Steven and me."

"Steven is your husband?"

"Oh, yes." She walked me around the plushy,
khaki-colored furniture to an entertainment center that occupied one
wall with television, VCR, CD-player, and so on. Pointing to a posed
family portrait of her and a tall, slim man, she said, "We've
been very happy here."

I made a show of admiring the photo in the stand-up
frame. Mrs. Stepanian was smiling, and I realized that I hadn't yet
seen her teeth, because in the photo they were tiny, with little gaps
between them. Steven Stepanian seemed a man who smiled reluctantly,
only grinning with a slight strain noticeable around the comers of
his mouth. He had the same dark, shiny hair and dainty chin as his
wife. Whoever contended that opposites attract had never met the
Stepanians.

I said, "Have you lived here long?"

"Nearly six years."

Which meant they would have bought at the top of the
market, back before the crash in real estate prices. "In that
case, you'll be an ideal person for me to interview. If you have the
time."

She seemed to consider that, almost solemnly. "Well,
yes, I guess so. I'm also on the condominium board of trustees, so I
deal with Boyce more than most."

"Terrific. I saw him this morning at the office
in Marshfield."

Stepanian paused. "Boyce didn't tell you who was
on our board of trustees?"

Uh-oh. "I told him I wanted to just visit the
complexes he manages on my own, get kind of a random sampling. Once I
was here, I would have asked about who was on your board, partly to
see how well Hendrix keeps residents informed, but you happen to be
my first stop."

"Oh." Again the relaxation. "Well, you
haven't seen any of our units, then?"

"Just from the street."

She glanced around, frowning. "I'm afraid our
place is a mess, as usual."

I glanced around with her. Everything seemed to be in
perfect order, and I wanted to be able to picture the interior of
Dees' unit next door. "How about just a quick tour?"

The frown relented. "All right. And then you can
ask me your questions."

"That would be a real help."

Stepanian gestured. "All of the townhouses here
at the Willows follow this same basic design, though the unit next
door would be the mirror image of this one. That's so the plumbing
for the kitchens and the downstairs half-baths share a common wall. I
guess you can tell this is the living room and dining area?"

"Functional."

"Yes, it's really easy to prepare and serve
meals without being cut off from conversation with Steven in the
living room." She pointed to one door. "Closet." And
another. "Half-bath."

Then Stepanian led me farther back. "This is the
rear deck. I was reading when you rang the bell."

Or bong. The deck was wood-planked, about fifteen
feet square with a low railing around its perimeter. I could see two
webbed lounge chairs, a white resin table between them and a kettle
grill with barbecue utensils off to the side. On one of the chairs
lay a hardcover Joyce Carol Oates, a bookmark stuck near the end of
it.

Stepanian gestured again. "Every unit has a deck
like this, though where the kitchen is kind of dictates which side
the sliding glass doors will be on." My guide turned and took an
extra step to pass well away from me. "The second floor is the
master bedroom and the guest bedroom."

I followed her up the stairs. The catwalk was wider
than it appeared from below, though the Stepanians had left it bare
except for the carpeting. She opened the door closest to the top of
the staircase.

"Master bedroom." Big and rectangular, a
sloping ceiling toward the back wall. "That door's the master
bath, the other a walk-in closet." Stepanian came out past me,
taking that extra wide step again. At the indentation, she said,
"Second bath, and"—beyond to the other door on the
catwalk—“guest bedroom, though we use it as a study."
Smaller, square, filled with desktop computer stuff and some
peripheral gadgetry. Like the first floor, there wasn't so much as a
knickknack out of place.

I gave her the extra margin this time as she came out
and went down the stairs and around to the kitchen. "This door
leads to the basement. Just workspace for Steven and the utility
closet."

“
Washer-dryer?"

"And the rest of the 'guts,' like heating,
air-conditioning, and so on."

Stepanian brought me back to the living room.
"Please, sit down and be comfortable?

I took one of the plushy easy chairs, thinking as I
sank into its cushions that "plushy" wasn't quite generous
enough. The thing nearly swallowed me, as though there were room for
another person underneath the cushions. Stepanian seemed unable to
take advantage of her own hospitality, instead perching on the edge
of the matching sofa like a seventh-grader attending her first coed
dance. I unzipped the portfolio and handed a questionnaire to her,
putting another on top of the portfolio as a writing surface.

The clouded look again. "What's this?"

"I want to be able to have a consistent
interview with each person I visit in each complex, so I figured my
working from a form and writing on it would make more sense. That
copy's so you can see what the questions will be, and maybe save us
both some time in answering the earlier ones. If you notice anything
on there that troubles you, please let me know."

She scanned the questionnaire.

I said, "Okay?"

Her eyes came up from the paper. "I suppose so."

"FULL NAME?"

"Lana L. Stepanian."

"HOMETOWN?"

"Do you really need that?"

Stepanian was proving to be good dress rehearsal for
using the questionnaire on Andrew Dees. "My clients thought it
would help them to judge how people from different parts of the
country might view their condo management company."

I wasn't completely convinced myself, but Stepanian
said, "Solvang, California."

"Can you spell that for me?"

"S-O-L-V-A-N-G. It means 'sunny field' in
Danish."

"You're from Denmark?"

A small smile, showing me the smaller teeth. "No.
Mexican-American. Solvang is northeast of Santa Barbara."

"MAIDEN NAME?"

"Lopez, with a Z."

"EDUCATION?"

"Boston University."